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STUDENT 



MFIS. MAP^THA ED'WIN'A IJBBY 

For sewnifim ygars a teac.lier in fSrrLiiri' atu' : . 

Spokane, and for eleven y i 1/ ^n^«i\ 

in the tirJifirii) ^fjoka, 



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A Compilation of Oocafional Eiiu-RittKUiul Pspi-r*, Mtni*!y 

A>:ldlrMi!edl to ttie 

SPOKANE SOROSIS CLUB. 

witK an introducd'ior. «",- 

NORMAN FRANK. C( ■ 



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Connin'ltct rtnd kiiM 

1, C, LIBBY, 



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IflBMi'fcint*. VVn 




y(esuz4^ C\£J^ 




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AMONG 



STUDENT-FRIENDS 



MRS. MARTHA EDWINA LIBBY, 

u 

For seventeen years a teacher in private and ^uh/ic schools in 

Spokane, and for eleven years teacher of English 

in the original Spokane High School. 



"M" 



A Compilation of Occasional Educational Papers, Mostly 

Addressed to the 

SPOKANE SOROSIS CLUB. 

with an introduction by 

NORMAN FRANK COLEMAN 

Professor of English in Reed College, Portland, Oregon. 



Vf 



Compiled and Edited by 

1. C. LIBBY. 



"W 



JOHN W. GRAHAM y CO 

Spokane. A^^ashinjton 



1^ 






Copyright, 1914 by 

I C. LIBBY, 

All Rights Reserved. 



FEB "U; 1914 



(0)CI.A362517 



TEACHER AND FRIEND. 



She loves the warbling of the glad, wild bird, 

"A robin singing in the rain," — its glee 

A symbol joyous, — and she loves to see 

The fields abloom as tints of spring engird 

The earth with life and joy. And have you heard 

Her tell of stars? Orion? Nebulae? 

Of motifs in that wondrous tapestry 

Above our heads? 'Twas her dear influence stirred 

The harpstrings of my thought. For her a throng 

Of students in life's symphony are grown 

To larger themes, and now in grateful song 

Remember that the daily lessons flown 

Are leavening their lives. To her belong 

Love's diapasons played in tender tone. 

— Florence Davis Keller. 



Contents. 



Introduction. 

Editor's Preface. 

Phillips Brooks, Knight of the Nineteenth Century. 

Helping Girls and Boys to Like Their School Work. 

Charles Dickens, Educator and Reformer. 

Have We An American Literature. 

Some American Historians, Well-Recognized and 
Otherwise. 



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Editor's Preface. 



In presenting- this little volume, long planned 
but finally rather hurriedly prepared, under the dark 
shadow of the prolonged helplessness of the author, 
the editor is constrained to explain that, if friends 
who have paid such earnest heed to the reading of 
these Sorosis papers should miss some shining link 
here and there in the chain of thought that encircled 
their company, they must charge it up, not to any 
failure on the part of the author or any careless- 
ness of the editor, but to the peculiar prostration 
of the former by reason of which all arrangements 
for the publication were necessarily carried on 
without her knowledge, for fear of disastrous re- 
sults otherwise almost certain. 

To the many devotedly sympathetic friends, with- 
out whose assistance the publication as it is accom- 
plished would have been impossible, the debt of 
gratitude can never be discharged; and, while it 
may be useless to try to mention hj name all such, 
within and without the Sorosis ranks, special thanks 
are certainly due to Professor Coleman for his 
Introductory Note; Mrs. M. E. Gamble for the 
cover design; Mrs. Florence Davis-Keller for the 
kodak snapshot there used, and to Mrs. Grace Nixon 
Stecher for clerical and other detail assistance — 
services vastly beyond mechanical. 

Spokane, January, 1914. 



Phillips Brooks, Knight of the 
Nineteenth Centuty. 




iSorosif., Feb ?VH- iOM, 



HE Scanciinavians in their oarly t 

ti;iu liisto!}' always mentioned tlu' 

Sitviour as "the white Christ." When 

the Norwegian aiitlioj' Bjoriisen was in 

(iiu- 'uunti'}' lie t^'newcci the acquaint - 
zAoofa e«ujLum 
ance formed with I ongteilow wnen tiie latter 

making a tour ortidaiid, ;md 

firm friends. AViieii Bj<" as siidd^^ 

home from New ^ 

with him to the fsteiiJiU'i. 'Mi ;\c' and a u juU 

hye to the whi- '' LongfeUoit. Ma> 
as appropriately LiinK of th- 
en reer we study all too briefl;v im 
wlio served with loft^^' gifts the 
fallow man, ■''-" ■^he irJ.iff PljUJir.-. 



May I ti'v u* ]ve'iLire 



; > '\ i ) 1 1 I n •■ 



people standing in <\>pley Square, Bur^uiii. i.au.-i ri;.- 
open sk}'- of a day '-^ '^; "I'ary, 1893, vviri,. tiie funeral 
■;er\'i<'<'S of Pliillii' ,{s wer<^' iH'i' hu'ted In 



Phillips Brooks, Knight of the 
Nineteenth Century. 




(Sorosis. Feb. 27th. 1911.) 



I HE Scandinavians in their early Chris- 
tian history always mentioned the 
Saviour as ''the white Christ." When 
the Norwegian author Bjornsen was in 
our country he renewed the acquaint- 
ance formed with Longfellow when the latter was 
making a tour of the Northland, and they became 
firm friends. When Bjornsen was suddenly called 
home from New York, he said to Howells, who went 
with him to the steamer, "Give my love and a good- 
bye to the tvhite Mr. Longfellow.^' May we not just 
as appropriately think of the one whose marvelous 
career we study all too briefly this afternoon, the one 
who served with lofty gifts the lowly needs of his 
fellow man, as the wMte Phillips Brooksf 

May I try to picture to you the vast throng of 
people standing in Copley Square, Boston, under the 
open sky of a day in January, 1893, while the funeral 
services of Phillips Brooks were being conducted in 



Trinity Church? There were hushed voices and sad 
faces when the services in the church were ended 
and the body was borne from the church, as it had 
been carried in, on the shoulders of Harvard stu- 
dents and placed in a catafalque in sight of the great 
assembly, where a second service was held. Prayers 
were said, and a favorite hymn of the great preacher 
was sung: "0 God, Our Help in Ages Past." Then 
the procession passed through Harvard Yard to 
Mount Auburn. 

That was a dark day in Boston. The awful in- 
telligence that Phillips Brooks was dead fell upon 
the city and the country at large with the effect of 
unspeakable calamity, a sorrow which at first could 
hardly find words for expression, "a? in the shadow 
of some great affliction the soul sits dumb." When 
utterance began there were numberless expressions 
of love and admiration. So it went on in a way that 
can not be forgotten during months and years that 
may be thought of as the afterglow of that great 
life; and today, while for nearly twenty years the 
New England snows have lain white upon that grave 
in beautiful Mount Auburn, we say there was that 
in his smile and in his sympathetic life that could 
not die, for it has not died. 

Do you ask me the secret of his power? I re- 

2 



call the tribute to him by Chancellor Day of Syra- 
cuse: 

"The scholar said, 'He is of us,' and the unlet- 
tered said, 'He is of us.' The poor said, 'He is 
ours,' and the rich, 'He is ours.' To the young he 
was full of mirth and buoyancy, and to the troubled 
he was a man acquainted with grief. All men claimed 
him because in his magnificent heart and sympathy 
he seemed to enter into their disappointments and 
successes and make them his own." 

For thirty years through a remarkable career 
Phillips Brooks exerted an unexampled influence over 
hundreds of thousands of his fellow men, and it was 
felt that he had some power or secret of power that 
he did not or could not impart. A friend recalls an 
occasion when he had invited a number of young men 
to the rectory. Among them was a theological stu- 
dent who was observed to be moving about the study 
in a distracted manner, — even getting down on his 
hands and knees in order to read the titles on the 
lower shelves. As Mr. Brooks was not in the room 
at the time, the friend took the liberty to ask the 
young man if there was anything he was searching 
for. He replied, "I am trying to find out where he 
gets it." When asked if he had found the source, 
he replied, "He gets it here," tapping his forehead. 

3 



I prefer to think that more than in the richness 
of his cultured mind the secret of his power lay in 
his transparent honesty and sincerity which so won 
the confidence of his hearers that anything he might 
say gained an increased force from the weight of 
his personality. He was a reserved man, not easy 
to converse with; he gave his inner thoughts to the 
world only through his sermons. It was a summary 
of his own experience when he said in one of these 
sermons, "Keep your life pure, that some day God 
may make it holy." 

''The Brooks Boys," for there were six of them, 
of whom Phillips was the second, passed their 
healthy, happy boyhood in Boston, and Phillips en- 
tered the Boston Latin School at the age of eleven. 
This school gave to him the benefit of its famous 
training in the Classics, and in his devotion to Greek, 
"the morning land of languages," we can trace the 
first signs of the distinctive character of his literary 
work. He entered Harvard before he was sixteen, 
and became a Harvard man at once. The college 
then had a remarkably distinguished corps of teach- 
ers. Literature was represented by Longfellow; the 
natural sciences by Agassiz and Asa Gray; and it 
must have been a satisfaction to the boy who de- 
lighted in the study of Greek and its literature to 
have for his instructor one who sent a great part of 

4 



his quarterly salary to his home on the banks of the 
Ilissus; for a man whose name was Sophocles was 
then Professor of Greek at Harvard. Phillips Brooks 
was a thorough, conscientious student, but not a 
''grind." He became a member of the famous 
''Hasty Pudding Club," where his cast in the the- 
atricals was usually determined by his height, which, 
when he entered college, was six feet three. He does 
not seem to have given any sign of becoming an 
orator, and it is said of him in his college days that 
he despised elocution as at war with naturalness 
and simplicity. His earliest delivery was identical 
with his latest, marked by the same extraordinary 
rapidity. Soon after his graduation from Harvard 
he entered the theological seminary in Alexandria, 
old Virginia. He thus left home for the first time, 
at the age of twenty ; for in his course at Harvard 
he was always at home in Boston on Saturdays and 
Sundays. He was followed by letters which assured 
him that he was never for a moment forgotten. He 
responded to this affection by carrying about with 
him the memory of the home circle as a picture upon 
his soul in colors unfading. iVt heart he always re- 
mained a boy in the household until the loved father 
and mother had passed from the world. The sense 
of the dearness of the home life grew stronger as 
he grew older. He wrote to his brother Frederick. 

5 



after he had begun his work in the ministry, "My 
own impression, strengthened every day since I left 
home, is that we have one of the happiest homes 
the world can show. Don't you begin to think so, 
Fred?" 

Shall I read to you one of his delicious letters 
written to the folks at home when he was taking his 
first trip abroad! *'My Dearest Mother: You can 
not think how strange it seems to be writing to 
you in this little German inn, and knowing that you 
will read it in the old back parlor at home, where 
you have read all of my letters. Johnnie will bring 
it up from the Post Office some night, and Trip will 
break out into one of his horrible concerts two or 
three times while you are reading it. Then as soon 
as it is read Father will get out his big candle, and 
you will put up the stockings, and all go up the old 
stairway to the old chambers and to bed. Well, 
good night and pleasant dreams to you all, and don't 
forget that I am off here, wandering up and down 
these old countries, thinking ever so much about 
you." 

There is a French phrase which we often quote, 
although it can not easily be translated into our lan- 
guage — Noblesse oblige. Does this not come to our 
minds when we say that the Brooks boys were well 
born, and the world would naturally expect noble 

6 



lives from the sons of such a father and mother? 
Of his father Phillijis Brooks wrote, "He was one 
of the truest, happiest, healthiest natures that God 
ever made. All his life long was a delight in the 
faithful doing of common things; and now I miss 
him as I never dreamed I could miss anybody, and 
it will be so to the end, I know." Of his mother, 
"The happiest part of my happy life has been my 
mother." Was there ever a more beautiful tribute 
to a mother from her son than the reply of Phillips 
Brooks to a friend who said to him, when the invi- 
tation came to him to preach before Queen Victoria, 
at the chapel of Windsor Castle, "Really, Brooks, 
won't it make you a little nervous to preach before 
the Queen!" He replied, "Why should I be nervous 
in preaching before the Queen? 7 have preached 
before my mother!" 

There are people in Trinity Church today who 
remember the mother's face as she listened with 
rapt attention to her son's sermons, and who also 
remember her going to him at the close of the sermon 
and saying in her shy, modest way, "That was a 
beautiful sermon, Phillie!" The mother may, at 
one time, have been troubled at the divergence of 
her son from her own Puritan opinions, but after he 
came to Boston as the rector of Trinity Church it 
was enough for her to know that he was telling the 

7 



old, old story with a power and insight she never 
had known before. In the light of her own generous 
and affectionate commendation it is amusing to know 
that she occasionally asked some close friend if it 
were possible for the lavish praise to spoil him. 
Adulation did not make him less humble. In spite 
of his unequalled popularit.y and his continuous suc- 
cess his modesty and humility did not fail. He had 
the same child-like spirit at the end as at the be- 
ginning. It seems most fortunate that when Phillips 
Brooks graduated from the Episcopal theological 
seminary he began his ministry in Philadelphia, 
where he was called to become the rector of the 
Church of the Advent. He was shy and sensitive, 
and in the colder and more critical atmosphere of 
New England he might not at first have been appre- 
ciated. To those who were used to the slow, delib- 
erate oratory — the so-called ministerial tone — he must 
have seemed to defy every rule. He had a voice of 
great sympathy, and yet this boyish preacher gave 
his audience no time to think about his voice, whether 
it were fine or not. There was a rush of sentences, 
one tumbling after another, giving the listeners all 
they could do to follow, for somehow he made them 
intensely eager to follow and to catch every word. 
Aside from the rapid manner there was the occa- 
sional entanglement of words and the stumbling 

8. 



over sentences, and there must have been surprise 
at something so unlike anything they had ever heard 
before. He exerted from the first a mysterious 
charm, the secret spring of which neither he nor his 
hearers could understand. 

In the warm-heartedness of Philadelphia, in its 
freedom from a tendency to overcriticize, was the 
atmosphere in which his wonderful genius could 
thrive; and his words in regard to Dr. Vinton, who 
had been his predecessor at the Church of the Holy 
Trinity to which Phillips Brooks was called from the 
Church of the Advent, can be applied to his own 
work in Philadelphia: ''It was one of the brightest, 
sunniest pictures which the annals of clerical life 
have anywhere to show." 

The Civil War with its issues opened at the 
time when he was beginning his ministry. We must 
remember that Philadelphia was close to the border 
and the factional spirit ran high. Mr. Brooks did 
not defy this, he disregarded it, taking his heroism 
not tragically, but naturally, as if men were always 
true and brave. In the pulpit and on the platform 
he was earnestly and eloquently on the side of the 
nation, with a forgetfulness of self which was one 
of the most sublime factors of those troublous times. 

Though still a youth he became a representative man, 

9 



showing a remarkable capacity for leadership. In 
the brief records in his diary at this time one can 
but be impressed with his wish to be of service in 
the simplest ways. In the entry of Saturday, July 
11th, 1863, just after the battle of Gettysburg, we 
read, "All day among our men, distributing cloth- 
ing, and writing letters." Sunday, 12th, "All day 
among the southern wounded in the hospital. Ter- 
rible need and suffering." Those who knew what 
strength was in his very presence can appreciate 
what it meant when he went through the wards of 
the hospital, and it is beautiful to note that in this 
awful hour he knew no discrimination between the 
Blue and the Gray. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who was 
one of his parishioners and an intimate friend, said 
of him in recalling him at this time, "I have known 
a number of men we call great, poets, statesmen, sol- 
diers, but Phillips Brooks was the only one I ever 
knew who seemed to me entirely great. The most 
vivid picture I retain of him is as he appeared at 
his Wednesday lecture when he used to stand away 
from his desk so that his massive figure and the 
strength of his head had their effect, and from his 
great height the magic of his wonderful eyes was 
felt like the light of some strong tower by the sea." 

He made frequent visits to the home in Boston, 
but the date of his going to Cambridge in 1865 to 

10 



make the prayer at the Harvard Commemoration 
may be thought of as the time when Boston claimed 
him and would not be content until he was her own. 
At the Harvard Commemoration were represented 
the glory and strength of New England. In the 
church at Harvard Square poems were read by Julia 
Ward Howe, Emerson, Holmes and by Lowell, who 
read his now famous Commemoration Ode, but it 
was Phillips Brooks who uttered in his prayer the 
word that the great moment demanded. When the 
prayer was over the people turned and looked at one 
another. Here is a contemporary comment, ''As he 
stood in all the majestic beauty with which he is en- 
dowed by favoring nature he stood to mortal eye 
confessed of hosts the leader and of princes the king. 
One would rather have been able to pray that prayer 
than to lead an army or conduct a state. It is not 
too much to say that that prayer was the crowning- 
grace of the Commemoration." "AVhen the 'amen' 
came," comments another, "it seemed that the occa- 
sion was over, that the harmonies of the music had 
been anticipated, that the poems had been read and 
the oration uttered; that after such a prayer every 
other exercise might well be dispensed with." Said 
President Eliot, "It was the most impressive utter- 
ance of a proud and happy day. Even Lowell's 
marvelous ode did not, at the moment, so touch the 

11 



hearts of the listeners." I might say here that no 
record of that prayer remains. It is certain that 
for this, as for all public utterances, he made the 
most careful preparation. He was the despair of 
reporters, and it would be impossible for any one 
to give from memory the glowing words. 

After refusing again and again to listen to the 
call to old Trinity Church in Boston, he finally ac- 
cepted. 

One writer says of the early days of his minis- 
trations in Trinity, "It is pleasant to see Phillips 
Brooks's audience, and to analyze it. I had ex- 
pected that it was exclusively of the educated classes, 
but it is not. From the place where I sat last 
Sunday evening I could pick out easily enough the 
sewing girls, the Boston clerks, the men of leisure 
and study, the poor old women with their worn and 
faded, but thoughtful and earnest faces, and it was 
a, dear sight — all these classes and conditions of 
people riveted to the countenance of Phillips Brooks 
and hanging on his words." 

You know the story of the wonderful years that 
followed his coming to Trinity; the destruction of 
the church on Summer St. in the great Boston fire; 
the four years in which the congregation worshiped 
in Huntington Hall while the new Trinity was being- 
erected in what is known as the "Back Bay" dis- 

12 



trict. At this time the secular hall took on a sacred 
character, and there was no lessening of the crowds 
that came to every service, until in 1877 the mag- 
nificent new clnirch was completed, and Phillips 
Brooks took his place as in a cathedral, where for 
many years he swayed the people with a power that 
had been hitherto unknown. The years as they 
passed over him did not diminish the beauty of his 
countenance or the dignity and symmetry of his 
form. In every company he carried the highest dis- 
tinction in appearance. Chief Justice Harlan said, 
"I sat opposite him once at dinner, and could not 
take my eyes off him. He was the most beautiful 
man I ever saw." A Roman Catholic Sister said 
to a friend who had sent to her one of Phillips 
Brooks's portraits, "I thank you for sending me 
the lovely picture of one of the loveliest men the 
world has ever known. The picture now hangs in 
my room beside a copy of Hoffmann's Christ, and 
seems at home there." 

This was the time when he began to be claimed 
by other religious communions as though, when such 
power was concerned, all creed distinctions should 
be subordinate. Thus we hear of his preaching, 
when he was in New York, at the Fifth Ave. Dutch 
Reformed, or in Philadelphia at the First Baptist 
and the Presbyterian. He began to realize that what 

13 



people wanted was himself. No callers who came 
to him at the rectory were refused admittance. 
There were numberless instances in his life where 
other interests were laid aside that he might devote 
himself to a single case of need. Letters came to 
him from all parts of our country and England com- 
mitting to him the care of young people who had 
come to the great city for the first time. 

At one time two poor women of Salem who were 
of the Catholic faith and had never heard Phillips 
Brooks were talking of a wayward boy. One of 
them said to the other, "The thing to do is to take 
him to Phillips Brooks," His power in the sick 
room was wonderful and rare. In the early '80s 
there was no apparent lessening of his boundless 
vitality. In a newspaper item at that time we read, 
''Yesterday was a dismal day, even for Boston No- 
vember, but Phillips Brooks walked down News- 
paper Row in the afternoon, and all was bright." 
Browning's words might have been written for him, 

"Oh, the wild joy of living! 
How good is man's life! the mere living how fit to employ 
All the heart, the soul and the senses forever in joy!" 

A working man living in one of the suburbs of 
Boston was told at the hospital that he must undergo 
a serious operation; that he could not live without 
it; and it might be, even then, his life could not be 
saved, — but there was a chance. He went home and 

14 



told his wife. They had before them the anxious 
evening, and they went to Trinity rectory, although 
neither had known Phillips Brooks, and they had 
not the slightest claim on his attention. Mr. Brooks 
received them as they knew he would — talked with 
them, and soothed them and promised to l>e with 
them at the hospital the next day. 

One of his many wealthy parishioners had an 
appointment to meet him at the rectory at 8 o'clock 
one evening to go to a reception. Not until 11 did 
Mr. Brooks return to keep the appointment. He 
had been detained at the hospital by a negro who 
had been injured and had sent for him. A physi- 
cian whom they met expressed surprise that Mr, 
Brooks had not sent his assistant, as a physician 
would have done. Mr. Brooks quietly replied that 
the man had sent for him. 

Any sketch of the life of Phillips Brooks must 
include his relations to children. The letters written 
to his little nieces, while he was abroad in their 
childhood, and which were published after his death, 
are delightful. It was the children of his Sunday 
school in Philadelphia for whose Christmas exer- 
cises he wrote, after he had visited the Holy Land, 
the exquisite hymn, "0 Little Town of Bethlehem," 
and this has been given an honored place in the 
church hymnals of all denominations, and thus be- 

15 



longs to tlie children of all time. There were chil- 
dren in various institutions of that city of beautiful 
charities whom he carried in his heart. Helen Keller 
was entrusted to his care by her father, who wished 
her first religious instruction to come from Phillips 
Brooks. It was he who gave to that rare girl her 
first idea of God. There were children in many 
households who rejoiced at his coming and who 
claimed him as their friend, and if you should ask 
me to tell you today what seems to me the most 
beautiful of the numberless tributes of affection and 
admiration to the memory of this knight of the 
nineteenth century, it would not be the vast throng 
standing in the wintry square with sad faces, re- 
markable as was that demonstration, — it would not 
be the stately Brooks house, built in Harvard Yard 
to commemorate Mr. Brooks's personal religious 
work among the students, — with its sig-nificant in- 
scription, "Did not our hearts burn within us as 
he talked with us by the way!" Neither would it 
be the charitable work of the wealthy parish where 
every wish of the leader whose hands were folded 
so long ago is lovingly followed. But I should tell 
you of the unconscious tribute of a little child of 
whom Mr. Brooks had been particularly fond. One 
summer day in '98 I had gone with a dear friend 
from the busy Boston street into Trinity church, 

16 



which is always open, just as Mr. Brooks wished it 
to be. It was wonderfully restful to go from the 
glare of the summer noontime into the cool and spa- 
cious church, with its light softened by the rich 
decorations of LaFarge, and we seemed to feel the 
inspiration of the presence which for so many years 
uplifted the hearts of all who entered the place. 

As we went from the church my friend told me 
of a little girl whose father and mother had dreaded 
to tell her of the sudden death of Mr. Brooks, and 
for several days his name had not been mentioned 
in the presence of the little child. But one day she 
said, "Why does not Mr. Brooks come to play with 
me any more?" The mother replied, "Mr. Brooks 
is in heaven now, my darling." Instead of the burst 
of grief that the mother had expected, the child 
said, w^ith face aglow, "0 mother, won't the angels 
be j^lad?" 




17 



Helping Girls and Boys to Like Their 
School Work. 



(Spokane Chronicle. Sept. 30th, 1905.) 



F COMPOSITION writing is dreaded 
by the pupils of our schools, it is in 
many instances the fault of the teach- 
ers," declares Mrs. I. C. Libby, the 
well-known teacher of rhetoric at the 
High School, who has guided so many of Spokane's 
young boys and girls through two terms of rhetoric 
and made the study of English a pleasure for them. 
This answer was given as a reply to the question 
as to whether the writing of compositions is ever 
a pleasure to the boys and girls. 

"The pupils in the High School who do the 
most excellent work in this line are those who have 
had the most careful training in the grades," stated 
Mrs. Libby, "for no part of the work is so im- 
portant as that of the earlier years. 

"In those years I believe it is possible to bring 

about the best results in writing without frequent 

use of the word composition, as is too often the 

18 



case. We are likely to find a traditional dread 
of that word. 

''Professor Brown of Tuft's College, tells this 
story of an old gentleman who sat beside him in 
the great music hall in Boston during one of 
Dickens' marvelous readings. The man was an 
ardent admirer of Dickens, but he thoroughly dis- 
liked public readings or elocutionary efforts of any 
kind. As the author came upon the platform and 
began to tell his audience, as one would talk to 
a friend, of the old boat on the Yarmouth sands, 
with graphic descriptions of the family living there, 
the old gentleman seemed to forget everything around 
him and to be lost in the words of the speaker. 
At leng-th the rapt listener turned to Mr. Brown 
and said: 

'' 'This is wonderful, wonderful, and I wish he 
would keep on in this way and let the reading go.' 

"He had listened to page after page of 'David 
Copperfield,' and yet he did not know that the read- 
ing had begun. 

"So I believe that the unselfish and painstaking 
teacher can make the beginning of English composi- 
tion so attractive to pupils that they will take 
pleasure in the work from day to day and feel 
that writing does, after all, lead through ways of 
pleasantness. 

19 



'^I have to confess to sympathy with some of 
the objections made by leading educators against 
the too general sugar-coating of tasks set for our 
pupils in these days, but I believe the well-trained 
and experienced teacher (and surely it is no possible 
kindness to any other to be assigned to the English 
work in school or college) does right when he tries 
to make the class room a happy place to every 
pupil. 

"What is your idea of the value of oral composi- 
tion?" 

"Oral composition should from the earliest years 
be given an important place in this work. 

"Professor Herrick of the University of Chi- 
cago, says: 'Writing is very much like talking, 
and the pupil must be made to see that what he 
talks about is lit matter for writing.' 

"When the little children in the grades are 
encouraged in regular class exercises to talk of those 
things that interest them, the best results will fol- 
low throughout their school life. 

"Is it possible as a general thing to get pupils 
to do this freely?" 

"Always possible if the teacher has true sym- 
pathy and patience. Let me say, however, that 

20 



the teacher should never publicly criticize such 
efforts. 

''Much" of the time given to writing in the 
Eighth Grade and also in the first year of the High 
School may be ])leasantly and profitably spent in 
writing letters. It is not necessary to begin with 
business forms, but these may be brought in now 
and then until the pupil would not fail if asked to 
write any ordinary business letter. 

"To interest pupils at once in this line, the 
teacher has but to remind them of the fact that 
when they were little children they enjoyed writing 
letters. The teacher may read to the class letters 
written by a six-year-old Spokane boy to his mama: 

" 'Dear Mama: We are lonesome without you. 
There is a fire on old Baldy. 

It began in the middle 

And went both ways, 
Till it got on the back side 

Where we can't see the blaze. 

Your dear boy, Tom.' 

"Many mothers in Spokane, as elsewhere, count 
such letters among their choicest treasures. The 
classes will always be interested in reading the letter 
written by Philips Brooks to his nieces, and some 
one may be asked to read aloud to the class the 

21 



letter of 'Uncle Jack to Carol Bird,' or 'The Bird's 
Christinas Carol.' 

"The teacher may say to her class: I do not 
expect all of you to become great writers. One 
or two of my 100 pupils may sometime write a 
book. All of you will, I trust, write letters, and 
T wish you to know how to write accurate and in- 
teresting letters. 

"Not long ago one of our High School boys 
read to his class a letter written to him by his 
brother when a student at Harvard. This described 
in a most delightful way a tramp from Boston to 
old Concord town, over the road immortalized by 
Paul Revere. These diversions from the stereo- 
typed may never fail to arouse interest and to lead 
the pupils to realize that there is material for 
narration or description in the every-day occurrences 
of life. 

"Those who have artistic talent should be en- 
couraged to illustrate their letters. Some of the 
best work of this kind which I have ever seen has 
been done by pupils in our Spokane schools. Care 
must be taken that the illustrations may be looked 
upon as incidental, else the effect may be discour- 
aging to those whose talents do not lead them in 
that direction. 

22 



"Something very pleasant came to the XA 
English class of our High School, last year. Through 
the efforts of our i)rincipal and the principal of 
the Wintringham Higher Grade School of Grimsbj^ 
England, a correspondence was opened between the 
second year pupils and the corresponding grade of 
ours. 

"If any thing were needed to convince our 
teachers that the schools of the United States are 
not abreast of the English schools in the founda- 
tion work of English compositions, those letters 
would have been sufficient proof. Neat and accur- 
ate, with pretty descriptions of the school and 
the interesting old town, those letters were written 
by boys and girls whose ages averaged 13 years. 

"The average age of our pupils to whom the 
letters were addressed was 15 years. The replies 
written by our Spokane pupils were evidently of 
great interest to their young English friends, and 
in some instances the correspondence has continued 
through the year. 

"This gave a definiteness to composition work 
which can but be of lasting and inestimable value 
to the young people concerned. 

"No pupil can do his best work in writing upon 
a subject which does not appeal to him." 

23 



Charles Dickens, Educator and 
Reformer. 

(Sorosis, Nov. 25th, 1907). 




HIRING the last twenty- five years num- 
berless so-called historical novels have 
been written, few of which, if I may 
venture to predict, will be much 
thought of a half century hence — and 
there is pleasure in returning to those compositions 
of this character which have stood the test of time 
and so have a right to be called classics. Among 
these Dickens's Tale of Two Cities holds a high 
place. In none of his books did the author show 
more clearly skill in imaginative writing. There can 
be nothing more remarkable in our literature than 
the picture of a wasted life saved at last by heroic 
self-sacrifice. Sidney Carton suffers himself to be 
mistaken for another and gives his life that the girl 
whom he loves may be happy with that other, — the 
secret being known only by a poor little girl in the 
tumbril that takes them to the scaffold in the ter- 
rible times of the French Revolution. 

This girl at the moment has discovered his 

24 



secret and it strengthens her also to die. Can we 
find any word painting more vivid than the descrip- 
tion of the knitting women who have come together 
to the phice of execution? "The terrible work begins. 
Crash! and the women count one. The machine 
whirrs and falls, with each stroke ending a human 
life, and the knitting women never falter nor pause 
in their work. She kisses his lips, he kisses hers; 
they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does 
not tremble as he releases it. Nothing but a sweet, 
bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes 
next before him, is gone. The knitting women count 
twenty-two. The murmuring of many voices, the up- 
turning of many faces, the pressing on of many foot- 
steps in the crowd so that it swells forward in a 
mass like one great heave of water — and the knit- 
ting women count twenty-three. 

They said of Sidney Carton about the city that 
night that his was the peacefuUest face ever beheld 
there. Many added that it looked sublime and pro- 
phetic. ' ' 

In this story so marvelously told, the home life 
of a few simple, every-day people is so interwoven 
with the outbreak of a terrible public event that one 
seems to belong to the other. When we are made 
conscious of the first sultry drops of a thunder-storm 
that fell upon a little group sitting in an obscure 

25 



English lodging, we see the actual beginning of a 
tempest which is preparing to sweep away every- 
thing in France. 

Not long ago I asked our city librarian if 
Dickens is a popular author among the patrons. 
Her reply was, "His books are constantly read." 
I then asked which of his books seemed to be the 
favorites with Spokane readers. She replied un- 
hesitatingly "Dombey and Son and Nicholas Nickle- 
by. " I was pleased to know this, but, like Oliver 
Twist, I call for "more" and should be glad to know 
that David Copperfield and Old Curiosity Shop have 
their share in public favor, for in these four books 
we have abundant proof that Charles Dickens was 
not only an educational critic and reformer, but an 
educational leader, as well. We might say, in pass- 
ing, that Dickens was the first Englishman of note 
to advocate the kindergarten, and his name may be 
worthily classed with that of Froebel as an inter- 
preter of Christ's ideals of childhood. As we all 
know, Nicholas Nickleby was a protest against the 
neglect of education in England at the time of its 
publication and closed forever such establishments 
as Do-the-Boys Hall. On the summit of a desolate 
hill in Yorkshire still stands the house which Dickens 
pictured as the Squeers' School. Tourists tell us 
that the building presents so cheerless an aspect 

26 



that one can hardly conceive of a more depressing 
environment for the neglected children who once 
thronged its halls. There are people still living in 
the village who remember the school master. His 
name, like Squeers', was of one syllable and began 
with S. He was not, however, like Squeers in 
person, nor was he ignorant. His school was the 
largest of the many cheap schools which the author 
of Nicholas Nickleby had in mind. Beside rooms in 
adjoining houses, he hired barns in which to lodge 
his many pnpils. A farm connected with the estab- 
lishment was cultivated by the boys, whose food was 
chiefly oatmeal. Scanty food and liberal flogging 
came to all who displeased the master. Do you 
recall the description of the boys of the school! 
'"Tliere were little faces, which should have been 
handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged 
suffering. There was childhood with the light of 
its eye quenched, its beauty gone and its helpless- 
ness alone remaining — there were vicious faced boys, 
brooding with leaden eyes — like malefactors in a 
jail, with every young and healthy feeling starved 
down, and fostering every revengeful feeling that 
can lurk in human hearts. What an incipient hell 
was here!" 

Probably no one of these schools realized all of 
the wretchedness portrayed by Dickens, yet in spite 

27 



of his declaration that Squeers was the representa- 
tive of a class and not an individual the popular 
recognition of this school as the typical Do-the-Boys 
Hall wrought its ruin and the death of master and 
mistress. This last, too, he deplored, since in their 
case the odium seems to have been not wholly de- 
served. 

In the sketch of the all too brief life of little 
Paul Dombey the author aimed to overthrow an- 
other giant school evil, the evil of cramming and 
urging. Dr. Blimber was the type chosen to depict 
this evil. Wlienever a young gentleman was taken 
in hand by Dr. Blimber, he might consider himself 
sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The doctor under- 
took the charge of only ten young gentlemen, but 
he had always ready a supply of learning for a hun- 
dred and it was the business and delight of his life 
to gorge the unhappy ten with it. 

To Dr. Blimber, Mr. Dombey brought his frail 
little son with the injunction that he was to learn 
everything. In this we can see that the author in- 
tended to imply that the ambition of the parent was 
as much at fault as the ignorance of the teacher. 
I believe it to be very rarely the case that parents 
do not deserve the greater share of blame when the 
health of children is ruined by cramming. Before 

28 



breakfast on the morning after the dear little fellow 
entered this school he was given so many books that 
he was unable to carry them to his room. They 
were a little English and a deal of Latin, names of 
things, declensions, a trifle of spelling, a glance at 
ancient history, a wink or two at modern history, a 
few tables and a little general information. When 
Paul had spelled number two, he found he had no 
idea of number one and when his teacher took him 
in hand after breakfast, whether twenty Romuluses 
made a Remus or hie, haec, hoc was Troy weight or 
a verb always agrees with an ancient Briton, or 
three times four was Taurus, a Bull, were open ques- 
tions with him. So the fearful process of cramming 
went on until the frail body yielded and little Paul 
was taken home to die. Do we not find in this a 
lesson of the importance of systematic physical 
training and this as well — that little Paul Dombey was 
killed by his father and Doctor Blimber! 

It is well for us to know that Dickens never 
stood so high in public favor as at the completion 
of David Copperfield. As successive numbers of the 
story appeared there had been a growing suspicion 
that underneath the story lay something of the 
author's own life. When busy with its closing pages 
he wrote to a friend, "I am within three pages of 
the shore, and am strangely divided between sorrow 

29 



and joy. If I should tell you half of what Copper- 
field makes me feel tonight, how surely even to you, 
I should be turned inside out! I seem to be send- 
ing some part of myself into the shadowy world." 
In none of his stories has he shown more clearly 
the strength of simple, homely goodness which may 
lift even to grandeur the clumsiest human being. 
Critics agree that there is no more impressive de- 
scription in our language than that of the storm 
and wreck, when the body of Steerforth is thrown 
dead upon the shore amid the ruins of the home he 
has wasted and by the side of the man whose hap- 
piness he blighted. AVe are glad to know that the 
author's own favorites in the book were the Peg- 
gotty group and Dr. Strong, for in this book we 
have two schools — the extremes of the bad and the 
good, — the one, taught by Mr. Creakle, a selfish 
brute of the Squeers type, the other, by Dr. Strong, 
who embodied every high ideal in modern education. 
You remember his appeals to the honor of the boys 
in his care and how in every way he showed them 
that he should believe them to be gentlemen unless 
they proved themselves to be unworthy of the name. 
Every teacher and every mother knows that there 
is no surer way to lead a boy to do his best, for a 
youth is indeed depraved who does not wish to bear 
''the grand old name of gentleman." 

30 



If there were time, I should like to speak of 
Mr. Gradgrind, the type of the utilitarian teacher 
depicted in Hard Times. I will simply recall to you 
the needs of the teacher's own son Tom, in which 
he expressed his opinion of that system of educa- 
tional training. In one of the rare intervals when 
he and his sister Louisa were left alone, he said to 
her, "I'm a donkey, that's what I am. I'm more 
obstinate than one, I get about as much comfort as 
one — I'm more stupid than one and I should like 
to kick like one." 

In beautiful contrast to the brutal Squeers and 
the unsympathetic Dr. Blimber we have the dear 
schoolmaster in Old Curiosity Shop. His school was 
most old-fashioned, with none of our modern equip- 
ment. The methods of teaching were perhaps de- 
fective, but he holds a sure place in our memories, 
for in him we find the greatest thing in the world, — 
loving sympathy with his pupils. We can forget 
the old master's pride in the accomplishments of 
his sick pupil, his thoughtful erasing of the ink 
from the boy's copybook, his sadness when he stays 
from school, his request to little Nell to pray for 
his recovery, his assurance to the sick boy that the 
flowers in the garden were less gay because they 
missed him. These surely are proofs that Dickens 
recognized the spirit of sympathy as the most essen- 

31 



tial element in the character of parent or teacher. 
When the author had completed that part of the 
story in which he describes the death of little Nell, 
he wrote to his friend Forster: "Come over and 
let's have a run across the downs, I've just buried 
little Nell, and I've had a good cry." Can we 
wonder that the people in his books seem to us really 
to have lived when they were so real to him? It is 
pleasant for us to know that he was made conscious 
of public appreciation of the school-master and little 
Nell by numerous letters from those whose appre- 
ciation was dear to him, and when the magic pen 
was laid down for the last time, a tribute by one 
of our own countrymen was so beautifully expressed 
that I can think of no more fitting close to our dis- 
cussion. I may say that not many months before 
Dickens's death he had noted in the Overland 
Monthly two sketches by a young American writer 
in California, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and 
"The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and had expressed 
himself in terms of the strongest admiration. When 
word of the death of Dickens was flashed over the 
world, this young writer, all unconscious at that 
time of the Master's admiration for his work, put 
his tribute of appreciation into the form of a poem 
which he entitled 

32 



DICKENS IN CAMP. 

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, 
The river ran below, — 
The dim Sierras far beyond uplifting 
Their minarets of snow. 

The roaring camp-fire with rude humor painted 
The ruddy tints of health 

On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted 
In the mad race for wealth, 

Till one arose and from his pack's scant treasure 
A hoarded volume drew, 

And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure 
To hear the tale anew. 

And then while round them shadows gathered faster 
And as the fire-light fell 

He read aloud the book wherein the Master 
Had writ of little Nell. 

The fir-trees gathered closer in the shadows, 
Listening in every spray 

While the whole 'camp with Nell on English meadows 
Wandered, and lost their way. 
And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken, 
As by some spell divine 

Their cares dropped froTn them like the needles shaken 
From out the gusty pine. 
Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire 
And he who wrought that spell, — 
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire — 
Ye have one tale to tell. 

Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story 
Blend with the breath that thrills 
With hop-vines incense, all the pensive glory 
That fills the Kentish hills. 

And on that grave where English oak and holly 
And laurel wreaths entwine. 
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, 
This spray of Western pine. 




33 



Have We An American Literature? 

(Sorosis, October 13th. 1899.) 




jHPj question is occasionally asked, 
"Have we an American Literature?" 
We have to admit that American 
Literature, so-called, belongs almost 
wholly to the nineteenth century. 
Early in that century, Sidney Smith, a noted English 
essayist and writer, is said to have propounded this 
query: "Who reads an American book?" When 
Irving 's Sketch Book was published in 1820, winning 
for its writer universal recognition, it gave a reply 
to the query of the British Essayist, and the reply 
has been echoed and re-echoed during all the years 
since then, and today we can say proudly of many 
of our authors — "There is no speech nor language 
where their voice is not heard." 

Ben Hur and Uncle Tom's Cabin have been 
translated into the languages of all countries where 
there is any regard for literature. There is, in 
one of the art galleries of Boston, an exquisite 
portrait of Louisa Alcott, in which she is represented 
as surrounded by throngs of young people of every 

34 



race and clime — their faces eager and bright with 
the glow of youth. Do you not think that the sweet, 
generous woman who so loved the boys and girls, 
would have been glad to know (for she often dis- 
trusted her powers) that the famous artist would 
give to her helpful, wholesome writings, credit for 
a world-wide influence? 

There can be no better definition of the general 
term literature than this of Brander Matthews, 
and it is the one that for many years I have 
asked my boys and girls to memorize. You will 
recall it as brief and comprehensive: "Literature 
is the reflection and the reproduction of the life of 
any people." 

English Literature, then, is the record of the 
thoughts, and the feelings, and the acts of the English- 
speaking race. 

One writer has said, "Here in the United States, 
in Canada, in Great Britain, in Australia, and in 
India, there are new men and women keeping record 
of their thoughts, their feelings, and their acts. All 
that these men and women write, if only it be so 
skillfully presented as to give pleasure to the reader 
becomes a part of English Literature. It is no 
matter where the author lives, whether in New 
York or in Toronto, in Melbourne or in Bombay, 

35 



what he writes in the English language belongs to 
English Literature. It is no matter what the nation 
ality of the author may be, whether he be a citizen 
of the United States or a subject of the British 
Crown, if he uses the English language, he con- 
tributes to English Literature. ' ' 

Until the Declaration of Lidependence, the unity 
of the English race was unbroken, and until the 
end of the eighteenth century the course of English 
Literature had but a single channel. 

Since we in the United States began to have 
writers of our own, the record of our thoughts, 
our feelings, and our acts, may be called American 
Literature. But let us not forget that it is still 
a part of English Literature. 

Our best works, however, are not an echo of 
the literature of the world. 

Irving's writings, The Tales of Hawthorne, 
the Hiawatha and Evangeline of Longfellow and 
many others, are filled with American scenery, Ameri- 
can thought and American characters. 

The period of time lying between the war of 
1812 and the Civil War has been called the blos- 
soming time of our literature. To this period be- 
long our greatest names — Irving, (^ooper, Bryant, 
Hawthorne and Longfellow. 

36 



The period beginning with the Civil War and 
extending to the present, is broad and cosmopolitan 
in its character, and we often leave the general 
term American for a specific term, and speak of 
our New England, oiir Southern and our Western 
literature. Each of these sections has produced 
eminent writers. 

To me there is nothing more delightful than 
the comradeship which has been evinced in so many 
pleasant ways between literary people of our own 
country and those of England. Not long ago, 
an English resident of our city, a man of broad 
education, and, above all, a profound lover of his 
own country, said to me, "Do you know what poet 
is best loved in England?" I said, "Tennyson, 
of course." He replied, "To my mind, No; — Tenny- 
son is greatly honored and admired, but we love 
Longfellow." Then he repeated in a dreamy way, 
as if forgetful of every thing around him, line 
after line of the "Famine," from Hiawatha. I 
recalled then a story that I had once read of an 
incident that occurred when the poet was an honored 
guest of the people of England. A reception had 
been given to him at a hall in Birmingham. As 
he was walking with his host to the carriage, a 
laborer with hands grimy from work in the foundry, 

approached him and said : ' ' Excuse me, sir, but 

37 



are you Mr. Longfellow!" **Yes." "And you 
wrote the Psalm of Life! May I take your hand?" 
The golden-hearted poet and the laboring man 
clasped hands warmly, and the poet considered 
this one of the greatest compliments which he ever 
received. 

Once there appeared in one of our magazines a 
charming poem, anonymous in its publication, and 
so, perhaps we shall have to class it among the 
"waifs of literature," and yet it is so beautiful, 
not only in its appreciation of our loved poet, but 
in its graceful recognition of the generosity of 
the English people in giving room in the crowded 
Abbey for a memorial to him, that I wish you to 
hear it. 



Child! when you pace with hushed delight 
The cloistered aisles across the sea, 
Where ashes old of monk and knight 
Eenew the legends heavenly bright 
That charmed you from your mother's knee, 

And steal across the Abbey 's nave 
With War's superbest trophies set 
To some lone minstrel 's narrow grave 
Who more unto his country gave 
Than Tudor or Plantagenet, 

Scorn not the carven names august 
Where England strews immortal flowers, 
But, circled by her precious dust — 
Salute, athrill with pride and trust, 
Your own dear poet, child of ours! 
He stands among her mightiest, 
We craved it not, yet be it so, 
If his sweet art were least or best 
Is judged hereafter. For the rest 
Speak fondly, that the world may know: 
Not any with God's gift of song 

38 



Served men with purer ministries; 
Not one of all the lauded throng 
Held half the light he shed so long 
From that high, sunny heart of his. 

We are glad to know, too, that Irving and 
Hawthorne and Lowell were loved and admired in 
England. 

Tennyson and Longfellow were friends. Do 
you recall the tribute to Longfellow in Tennyson's 
matchless "In Memoriam"? 

I hold it true with him who sings 
To one clear harp with divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things. 

Mrs. Browning greatly admired the beauty of 
the lines of Poe's Raven, and we must remember 
that there is one writer whom we hold in com- 
mon, for while he is by birth an Englishman, he 
is loved and honored and at home as an American — 
I do not need to give you the name, Rudyard 
Kipling. 

For many years, we are told, that the author 
of John Halifax, Gentleman, held in her memory 
a little sketch which she found one day in reading 
one of our American periodicals. This was entitled 
"Sometime/' and runs: " 'Tis a sweet, sweet song," 
etc., etc. 

On the other hand, we are glad to know that 
in that sad summer so long ago, when Dickens laid 

39 



down his magic pen, leaving a half-told tale, not 
one of the many tributes to his worth was more 
appreciated or exquisite than that by our own Bret 
Harte.* 

Several of our American poets have written 
sonnets, and have you thought how many of those 
essaying this delicate form of poetical composi- 
tion, have paid honor to the earlier writers! Have 
you read the description of the Sonnet written by 
Gilder, of the Century Magazine! 

What is the sonnet? 'Tis the pearly shell 
Which murmurs of the far-off sounding sea. 

This was the flame that shook with Dante 's breath, 

The solemn organ whereon Milton played, 

And the clear glass where Shakespeare 's shadow falls. 

Students of literature have been pleased to couple 
the names of several English and American writers 
because of a certain indefinable something in their 
productions which seems to make them akin. Thus : 
Irving and Goldsmith, Wordsworth and Bryant. 

I do not wish to be presumptuous, but in this 
way I have often of late placed side by side two 
poems which seem to me to have a striking similarity 
in gracefulness and perfect simplicity. One of these 
you all know — Wordsworth's classic — We Are Seven. 
The other is by Henry C. Bunner, a New York 
writer who died a few years ago. 

*Page 33. 

40 



WE ARE SEVEN. 

I met a little cottage girl, 

She was eight years old, she said; 
Her hair was thick with many a curl 
That clustered round her head. 

She had a rustic, woodland air, 

And she was wildly clad; 
Her eyes were fair, so very fair, 

Her beauty made me glad. 

"Sisters and brothers, little Maid, 

How many may you be?" 
"How many? Seven in all," she said. 

And wondering, looked at me. 

"And where are they, I pray you tell," 
She answered ' ' Seven are we, 
And two of us at Conway dwell, 
And two are gone to sea. 

Two of us in the church-yard lie. 

My sister and my brother; 
And, in the church-yard cottage, I 

Dwell near them with my mother." 

"You say that two at Conway dwell, 
And two are gone to sea, 
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell. 
Sweet Maid, how this may be. 

You run about, my little Maid, 

Your limbs they are alive; 
If two are in the church-yard laid. 

Then ye are only five. 

How many are you then, ' ' said I, 
"If they two are in heaven?" 
Quick was the little Maid's reply, 
"O Master! we are seven." 

"But they are dead, those two are dead! 
Their spirits are in heaven!" 
'Twas throwing words away; for still 
The little Maid would have her will. 
And said, "Nay, we are seven! " 

The one written by Henry C. Bunner, of New 
York, is entitled, 

ONE, TWO THREE! 

It was an old, old, old, old lady, 
And a boy that was half -past three; 

41 



AuJ the way that they played together 
Was beautiful to see. 

She couldn't go running and jumping, 
And the boy, no more could he; 
For he was a thin little fellow. 
With a thin little twisted knee. 

It was Hide-and-go-seek they were playing, 
Though you'd never have known it to be — 
With an old, old, old, old lady. 
And a boy with a twisted knee. 

The boy would bend his face down 
On his one little sound right knee, 
And he 'd guess where she was hiding. 
In guesses One, Two, Three! 

"You are in the china-closet!" 
He would cry, and laugh with glee — 
It wasn't the china-closet; 
But he still had Two and Three. 

"You are up in papa's big bed-room. 
In the chest with the queer old key! " 
And she said: "You are warm and warmer; 
But you're not quite right," said she. 

"It can't be the little cupboard 
Where Mama's things used to be — 
So it must be the clothes-press, Gran-ma!" 
And he caught her with his Three. 

Then she covered her face with her fingers. 
That were wrinkled and white and wee. 
And she guessed where the boy was hiding. 
With a One and a Two and a Three. 

And they never had stirred from their places, 

Right under the maple tree — 

This old, old, old, old lady. 

And the boy with the lame little knee — 

This dear, dear, dear old lady. 

And the boy who was half-past three. 

This, then, is our claim — we have an American 
Literature, and a noble one. 

Let us be modest, however. 
In the past quarter of a century many his- 
torical novels have been written by American authors. 

42 



How many of these, think you, will be likely to 
stand the test of years with Henry Esmond, The 
Last Days of Pompeii, and A Tale of Two Cities? 

Again, our literature is a part of English litera- 
ture. As one writer has said, "The English litera- 
ture of the past is as much our heritage as it is 
that of the British. It belongs to us as it does 
to them, and we have an equal right in the splendid 
possession." 




43 



Some American Historians, Well- 
Recognized and Otherwise. 



(Sorosis, October 24tH. 1910.) 




NE of the most remarkable examples 
of descriptive writing in literature is 
Victor Hugo's description in Les 
Miserables of tlie field on which was 

fought the Battle of Waterloo. Many 
of you will probably recall the graphic words: "The 
Battle of Waterloo was fought on a piece of ground 
resembling the capital letter A. The English were 
at the apex, the French were at the feet, and the 
battle was decided at about the center." 

Some one has written: "We do not so much 
want history explained after the manner of science 
as we want it portrayed and interpreted after the 
manner of literature and life." 

Last summer there passed "into the silence" 
an old lady who had been honored for many years 
by the older residents of Spokane and of the Oregon 
country. Many of you knew and loved Mrs. Pringle, 
who was an adopted child in the household of 
Marcus Whitman, and when eleven years old was 
a witness of the terrible massacre. 

44 



Some American Historians, Well 
Recognized and Otherwise. 



(Soiosis, October 24l!i, 19iO.) 




NE of the most remarkable examples 
of descriptive writing- in' literature is 
Victor J lingo's description in Les 
Miserables of tile field on which was 
fought the Battle of Waterloo. Many 
of you will probably recall the graphic words: "The 
Battle of Waterloo was fought on a piece of ground 
resembling the cai)it^'TO(^-^W3"'^1^if9^.nglis]i were 
at the apex, tlie 'r'rench were at the feet, and the 
battle was decided at about tbe center.-' 

Some one has written: "We do not so much 
want history explained after tbe manner of science 
as we want it portrayed and interpreted after the 
manner of literature and life." 

Last summer there pass silence" 
'id lady who liad been honored for many years 
by the older residents of Spokane and of the Oregon 
country. Many of you knew and loved Mrs. Pringle, 
who was an adopted child in the household of 
Marcus AVhitman, and when eleven ^ ^^ was 

44 



Probably many of you heard her tell in her 
vivid, unaffected way, of that tragic event and of 
her subsequent captivity. I think of the fact that 
hundreds of our young people heard the story from 
her own lips, as of great historic value to them. 

One day several years ago, a teacher of his- 
tory and myself, combined our classes of history 
and English and asked Mrs. Pringle to talk to 
them during the fourth period, which you know 
is, in our schools, the last period of the morning 
session. I am definite about this because I wish 
to remind you that it is not an easily accomplished 
feat to hold the undivided attention of a throng 
of hungry boys and girls, especially when the odor 
of the noon-tide lunch pervades the building. 

Few of the pupils knew the plainly but neatly 
dressed old lady with earnest though wrinkled face, 
as she entered the room, but with the respect for 
elderly people which more than one person has 
found to be characteristic of our boys and girls, 
she was greeted with enthusiasm. And as she told 
them of her experiences and assured them that, not- 
withstanding the terrors of that time, through all 
the years she had held warm regard for the Indian, 
feeling that even the killing of Dr. Whitman was 
the result of frenzy to which they were incited by 
some outside influence, they were entranced, and 

45 



when the lunch signal sounded, not a pupil rose 
or took his eyes from her until she said: "Go, 
now, and eat your lunch. You shall hear more 
some other day." 

This interesting woman was an honored friend 
of Prof. Meany of the Seattle University, and was 
enthusiastic over his historical researches of the 
Northwest. May I not rightly call Mrs. Pringle 
a true historian? 

I thought of her as I walked through the 
tangled old orchard to the home of Mrs. Stillman 




H. T. COWLEY 

at the last meeting of our club, and felt that she 
would have been glad to know that the beautiful 

46 



historic place may become a city park. Here was 
the Indian school established by Mr. Cowley in 
the earliest days of the history of Spokane Falls, and 
here many of the Spokane Indians were led to 
trust the white men; for their teacher, gentle in 
manner and speech, and truly Interested in their 
welfare, was looked upon as their friend by the 
unique procession of pupils, many of them in bright 
blankets, who wended their way day after day 
along the trails to the little school building on the 
wooded south hillside. I must think that such 
a school was a powerful factor in making the Spo- 
kanes a more tractable and x^G^ceable tribe than 
were the Nez Perces, the Walla Wallas and other 
neighboring tribes. Should we not then rejoice 
in the possibility of perpetuating the beauties and 
associations of that historic spot? 

If I were to make an extended list of the names 
of American Historians, it would include the names 
of many authors whose works we have studied 
and enjoyed during the last two years, for in our 
literature there has been many times a faithful 
chronicle of our country's history. But you would, 
I am sure, expect me to mention Bancroft, who, 
after his graduation from Harvard, founded a 
school at Round Hill, in Northampton, was minister 
to Great Britain and also to Berlin, but is remem- 

47 



bered principally as the author of the history that 
bears his name. 

Wlien a noted London clergyman visited our 
country, for the first time, he was asked what im- 
pressed him most strongly. He replied, "When 
I went through the magnificent public library in 
Boston, more lasting than my memory of books, 
marvelous pictures or marbles, was that of a bare- 
foot boy curled up in one of the luxurious chairs, 
reading a copy of Bancroft's History of the United 
States." 

You would wish me to mention Prescott who, 
though nearly blind from an accident when he 
was an undergraduate at Harvard, made most care- 
ful resarches, especially in Spanish history, and 
obtained from Spain a large number of manu- 
scripts of priceless value — -"Reign of Ferdinand and 
Isabella, " " Reign of Philip II. " 

Prof. John Fiske of Harvard has added to our 
historical lore works particularly valuable because 
of their polished, scholarly character. You will 
remember that he was lecturer on American history 
not only at Harvard but in other leading colleges 
in this country and in England, and his books, 
"The Beginnings of New England," "The American 

48 



Revolution," etc., were compiled from these finished 
and scholarly lectures. 

We must not omit the name of Woodrow Wilson, 
whose election as Governor of New Jersey was one 
of the many democratic victories of last year. After 
his graduation at Princeton, he became a lawyer, 
but later returned to the study which was his de- 
light, the study of history and political science. 
'* Division and Reunion," Little Classic series, 1829- 
1889. He is still in his prime, and I am sure we 
shall hear of him in future days. 

I will not extend the list of these writers of 
plain historic facts longer than to mention Charles 
Carleton Coffin, whose works show him to be a 
conscientious historian of revolutionary times. He 
is very popular with the patriotic societies, the 
Sons and Doughters of the Revolution, and their 
unqualified approval is given to all his books, among 
which may be mentioned ''The Drum Beat of the 
Nation," "Building of a Nation," and "The Daugh- 
ters of the Revolution and Their Times." The 
reader of these books is convinced that the author 
realizes the fact that the revolutionary period was 
characterized by sublime enthusiasm, self-sacrifice 
and devotion, not only by the patriots but by loyalists 
who conscientiously adhered to the crown, and he 
reminds us that in our admiration for those who 

49 



secured the independence of the colonies, we must 
not overlook the sacritices and sutTerings of the 
loyalists, their distress during the siege of Boston, 
the agony of the hour when confronted with the 
appalling fact that they must become aliens, exiles 
and wanderers, leaving behind all their possessions 
and estates, an hour when there was a sundering 
of tender ties, the breaking of hearts. 

The books are illustrated by fine pictures, many 
of which are photographic copies of rare old prints. 
It was the great privilege of Mr. Coffin in his 
boyhood to have the story of the Battle of Bunker 
Rill told to him by three men who participated 
in the fight. In one of these books, "The Daugh- 
ters of the Revolution," the narrative of events 
takes the form of a story, a slight thread of romance 
being used to picture more vividly the scenes, and 
the parts performed by the actors in the great 
historic drama. In this plan he has followed the 
idea of many educators of eminence who believe 
that history may be more successfully taught through 
the medium of fiction than by any other form of 
diction. 

It has been said of Scott that he brought life 
out of the dead part of English history when he 
gave to the world his wonderful historical romances. 
Do you not remember your joy in the first read- 

50 



ing of ''Kenilworth" and "The Heart of Mid- 
lothian?" Many writers since that time have at- 
tempted the historical novel, bnt few have met 
with the remarkable success of Scott. 

In our own country this form of writing was 
at one time over-done. When we read of the pre- 
posterous doings of prominent figiires in our his- 
tory, we were shocked. A few American writers 
have taken unpatriotic pleasure in showing that 
such heroes as Washington and Lincoln were far 
from saint-like. We are glad to think of them 
as human, for so we can feel in sympathy with 
them and gain a more vi^dd idea of the men 
themselves. But we cannot have them brought too 
near. We want to idealize them just enough to 
strengthen our patriotic sentiments, but no more, 
else the historical romance will become what some 
have declared it to be — the enemy of the study of 
plain history. The distortion of true history in a 
romance is of more harm than good unless realized 
as such by the reader. 

The American humorist, with all his daring and 
irreverence, has not ventured very far upon the 
ground of the historian, but do you remember in 
Bill Nye's History of the United States, the story 
of Ben Franklin, and did you ever think of it as 
anything but the most delicious nonsense, and in 

51 



no way destined to lower the reader's estimate of 
the noble life of that historic character? 

'^ Benjamin Franklin, formerly of Boston, came 
very near being an only child. If seventeen children 
had not come to bless the home of his parents, 
they would have been childless. 

' ' Think of getting up in the morning and pick- 
ing out your shoes and stockings from among seven- 
teen pairs of them! Imagine yourself in a family 
where you would be called on to select your own 
wad of chewing gum from a collection of seventeen 
different wads on a window sill ! And yet Ben- 
jamin never murmured or repined. 

"Franklin became a good printer, and finally 
got to be foreman. He made an excellent fore- 
man, for he knew just how to conduct himself so 
that strangers would think he owned the paper. 
He grew to be a great journalist and spelled hard 
words with great fluency, and everybody respected 
him. 

"Along about 1746 he began to study the habits 
and construction of lightning. After every thunder- 
storm, armed with a string and an old door key, 
he would go out on the hills and get enough light- 
ning for a mess. 

"Franklin frequently went over to England in 
those days, partly on business and partly to shock 

52 



the king. It looked odd to the English, of course, 
to see him come into the royal presence and, lean- 
ing his wet umbrella up against the throne, ask 
the king, 'How's trade!' 

"He did his best to prevent the Revolutionary 
War, but he couldn't do it. Patrick Henry had 
said the war was inevitable and had given it per- 
mission to come, and it came." 

It may be questioned whether any work of 
fiction in the world's history has been so widely 
read and so productive of good as Ben Hur, by 
Lew Wallace, and surely none so far-reaching in 
its influence as the portrayal of the institution of 
slavery by Mrs. Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin. In 
an article in a late magazine among other remin- 
iscences of Lincoln, the story is told that when 
for the first time he met Mrs. Stowe during the 
dark days of '62, he looked at her earnestly and 
pathetically and said: "And are you the woman 
who brought on this terrible war?" 

Our poets have immortalized many events in 
our history. Longfellow was congratulated by Ban- 
croft on the success of the sweet pastoral "Evan- 
geline," and that part of Nova Scotia where the 
Arcadian line settled is known only as "Evangeline's 
Land," and as such is visited by thousands of tourists 
every summer. 

53 



Numberless persons date the beginning of their 
enjoyment of Amerioan history from the reading 
in the old school "reading book" of Paul Revere 's 
Ride, and as one goes today over the storied way 
from Boston to Lexington, these stirring lines are 
sure to be recalled: 

"A voice iu the darkness, a knock at the door, 
And a word that shall echo for evermore. ' ' 

When Dr. Holmes wrote "Grandmother's Story 
of Bunker Hill," he made the student of Colonial 




MRS. ADELAIDE GALLAND. 



history his debtor. I have asked Mrs. Galland, 
who loves England as the home of her childhood 

54 



and young womanhood, but wlio is in her mature 
womanhood a true American, to read this story. 

GRANDMOTHER'S STORY OF BUNKER HILL BATTLE. 



As She Saw It From the Belfry. 



'Tis like stirring living embers when^ at eighty, one remembers 
All the achings and the quakings of "the times that tried men's 
souls"; 

When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell the Rebel story. 
To you the words are ashes, but to me they're burning coals. 



At length the men have started, with a cheer (it seemed faint-hearted), 
In their scarlet regimentals, with their knapsacks on their backs. 

And the reddening, rippling water, as after a sea-fight 's slaughter. 
Round the barges gliding onward blushed like blood along their 
tracks. 

So they crossed to the other border, and again they formed in order; 

And the boats came back for soldiers, came for soldiers, soldiers 
still; 
The time seemed everlasting to us women faint and fasting, — 

At last they're moving, marching, marching proudly up the hill. 

We can see the bright steel glancing all along the lines advancing, — 
Now the front rank fires a volley, — they have thrown away their 
shot; 

For behind the earthwork lying, all the balls above them flying. 
Our people need not hurry; so they wait and answer not. 

Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would swear sometimes and 
tipple), — 

He had heard the bullets whistle (in the old French war) before, — 
Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they all were hearing, — 

And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the dusty belfry floor: 

"Oh! fire away, ye villains, and earn King George's shillin's. 
But ye '11 waste a ton of powder before a 'rebel' falls; 

You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan '1 Malcolm 
Ten foot beneath the gravestone that you've splintered with your 
balls!" 



Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are nearer, — nearer, — nearer, — 
When a flash — a curling smoke-wreath — then a crash — the steeple 
shakes — 

The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's shrould is rended; 

Like a morning mist it gathered, like a thunder-cloud it breaks! 

55 



Oh! the sight our eyes discover as the blue-black smoke blows over! 

The red-coats stretched in windrows as a mower rakes his hay; 
Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a headlong crowd is flying 

Like a billow that is broken and is shivered into spray. 



All at once, as we are gazing, lo! the roofs of Charlestown blazing! 

They have fired the harmless village; in an hour it will be down! 
The lord of heaven confound them, rain His fire and brimstone 'round 
them, — 

The robbing, murdering red-coats, that would burn a peaceful town! 

They are marching, stern and solemn; we can see each massive column 
As they near the naked earth-mound with the slanting walls so 
steep. 

Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in noiseless haste departed? 
Are they panic-struck and helpless? Are they palsied or asleep? 

Now! the walls they're almost under! scarce a rod the foes asunder! 
Not a firelock flashed against them! up the earth-work they will 
swarm! 
But the words have scarce been spoken, when the ominous calm is 
broken, 
And a bellowing crash has emptied all the vengeance of the storm! 

Etc., etc. 

Mrs. Howe's "Battle Hymn" and many songs 
of the North and South during the Civil War have 
become classics, and to them belongs a snre place 
in the history of those times. 

When the war had ended, Lowell wrote the 
matchless Commemoration Ode, and read it before 
a distinguished assemblage at the dedication of 
the Harvard Memorial in 1865, shortly after the 
tragic death of Lincoln. As we read it now, nearly 
a half century after the death of Lincoln, it seems 
to us to have been a prophecy which has indeed 
been fulfilled. I have asked Mrs. Galland to read 
these lines, for I am sure that her admiration of 

56 



the character of Lincoln, and her appreciation of 
this tribute will be a delight to the ladies of Sorosis 
and to the friends who are with us today, as it 
has been to me. 

FROM LOWELL'S COMMEMORATION ODE. 

Life may be given in may ways, 

And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as in the field, 

So bountiful is Fate; 

But then to stand beside her, 

When craven churls deride her. 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 

This shows, methinks, God 's plan 

And measure of a stalwart man, 

Limbed like the obi heroic breeds. 

Who stands self poised on manhood 's solid earth 

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 
Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the nation he had led. 

With ashes on her head. 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
Forgive me if from present things I turn 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 

Nature, they say, doth dote. 

And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan, 

Eepeating us by rote: 
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, 

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new. 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. 

Not lured by any cheat of birth. 

But by his clear-grained human worth. 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 

They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill. 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. 

His was no lonely mountain-jjeak of mind, 

Thrusting to thin air o 'er our cloudy bars, 

A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 

Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 

Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

57 



Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting moruward still. 

Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature 's equal scheme deface 
And thwart her genial will; 
Here was a type of the true elder race, 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 

I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 

Such as the present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 

So always firmly he: 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 

But at last silence comes; 
These are all gone, and, standing like a tower. 
Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American. 



Mrs, Galland will also read Father Ryan's 
tribute to Robert Lee. 

THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE. 

Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright, 

Flashed the sword of Lee! 
Far in the front of the deadly fight. 
High o'er the brave in the cause of right, 
Its stainless sheath, like a beacon light. 

Led us to victory. 

Out of its scabbard, where, full long. 

It slumbered peacefully. 
Roused from its rest by the battle song. 
Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong, 
Guarding the right, avenging the wrong. 

Gleamed the sword of Lee. 

Forth from its scabbard, high in air. 

Beneath Virginia 's sk}' — 
And they who saw it gleaming there, 
And knew who bore it, knelt to swear 
That where that sword led they would dare. 

To follow — and to die. 



58 



Out of its scabbard! Never hand 

Waved sword from stain as free, 
Nor purer sword led braver band, 
Nor braver bled for brighter land, 
Nor brighter land had a cause so grand, 

Nor cause a chief like Lee! 

Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed 

That sword might victor be. 
And when our triumph was delayed, 
And many a heart grew sore afraid, 
We still hoped on while gleamed the blade 

Of noble Eobert Lee. 

Forth from its scabbard all in vain 

Bright flashed the sword of Lee; 
'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again, 
It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain. 
Defeated, yet without a stain. 

Proudly and peacefully. 

As particularly fitting the career of the idolized 
hero, Gen. Robert Lee, I am reminded of this 
stanza: 

We hold him great who wears the crown 
Of a deserved and pure success; 
But he who knoweth how to fail 

Wears one whose lustre is not less. 

A representative citizen of Spokane, who was 
himself a colonel in the Civil War, who knew Lin- 
coln personally, and whose home was in St. Louis, 
where, you will remember the scene is laid of much 
of Winston Chnrchill's story "The Crisis," has 
told me that he has read the book again and again, 
and reads it always with new interest and with a 
strengthened admiration for the author. He de- 
clares the book to be historically correct. 

In this respect surely "The Crisis" stands 
pre-eminent among the books of its kind written 

59 



ill the last twenty-five years by our own authors, 
for we must remember that the object of the his- 
torical novel is dramatic and not historic. The novelist 
takes history as he finds it and always chooses his 
facts. He does not, of course, give all the facts, 
which will give a perfect reproduction of the time. 
The result is that we have a one-sided picture. 

The historical novel may, however, give us a 
personal touch which we cannot get from the his- 
torical work. In the second place, it often awakens 
an interest in some matter which sends one to the 
study of the real history. 

History has been likened to a view from a 
mountain-top — the historical novel to an hour spent 
in the valley. The far-reaching scene viewed from 
the summit gives us the vast extent, but the hour 
in the valley gives us the detail needed to com- 
plete the whole. 

Tlieii let us enjoy the historical novels pure 
and simple. Write for us the song and the story, 
ye weavers of romance, that we may correctly re- 
view through the long vale of past days some 
distant, lovely scene under the soul-hallowed twi- 
light of time. 



60 



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